Lisa's Laws: Snow-day schedule: snacks, shopping and socks

Sunday

Feb 23, 2014 at 2:00 AM

This has been a snowy winter and, if you have kids, that means it has also been a winter with a slew of school cancellations. Bella, our middle-schooler, has had, by my most recent count, nine snow days off so far. So many, in fact, that she doesn't even bother turning her jammies inside out any more. The snow, it seems, simply comes.

Lisa Ramirez

This has been a snowy winter and, if you have kids, that means it has also been a winter with a slew of school cancellations. Bella, our middle-schooler, has had, by my most recent count, nine snow days off so far. So many, in fact, that she doesn't even bother turning her jammies inside out any more. The snow, it seems, simply comes.

Filling all these free hours has been a challenge. And there all kinds of productive things you can accomplish. We've kept up on homework and baked some cookies, read a bit and did a craft project or two.

But snow days can be long. Here's a glimpse at how we've spent them:

Snow Day One: We completed the "What Harry Potter Character Are You?" quiz and found out that I am Snape, apparently because he and I both like "Edward Scissorhands." (I am also Tinker Bell, Lady Sybil and Floyd the Muppet. Despite all of this, I still see myself more as a Michonne.) Bella insists she is Hermione, but I think she tricked the test. Had she answered honestly, she would be one of the Weasley twins.

Snow Day Two: We agreed to suspend a longstanding Firehouse Road rule that snack-size bags of chips, pretzels and popcorn are held in reserve for a) school lunches, b) picnics and c) car trips exceeding 40 minutes in duration.

Snow Day Three: Ascertained that we have unfairly been blaming Sally the Cat for the poor state of the potted Dracaena in the dining room, and it is not she who has been nibbling at the ends of its long spindly leaves. It is BB the Boxer, and she should be ashamed. (Well, she should add Let the Cat Take the Blame for Eating the Plant to her list of Things of Which I, BB the Boxer, Should Be Ashamed, along with I Eat Garbage; I Sneak on the Guest Bed When Everyone in the House is Asleep, and When I Can't Get to the Garbage I Eat Cat Litter.)

Snow Day Four: Discovered that snack-sized bags of Pirate's Booty may have enough Booty to serve as an after-sandwich chaser, but it's actually pretty easy to polish off two, even three bags during an episode of "Psych."

Snow Day Five: Weather conditions vastly improved around lunchtime so we ventured out to Woodbury Common, where Bella spent a Christmas gift card at the Converse store and, in what turned out to be the absolute most thrilling of snow days in snow-day history, encountered a man in the Converse store who was not only wearing All Stars, but also spoke with a British accent, leaving Bella convinced that she had just bumped into the Tenth Doctor.

Snow Day Six: Bella broke her daily personal consumption records in three significant categories: Pasta, Nutella and Ranch Dressing Used as a Condiment on a Food Other Than Green Salad.

Snow Day Seven: Practiced cursive writing and, for a while, we utilized the Palmer Method of penmanship. But things got weird at "Q," so we decided to give it a break and reorganized her Converse collection instead.

Snow Day Eight: In a moment of snow-day induced spontaneity, I decided to switch up our sock drawers, reversing a long-held belief that it is best to organize them from light to dark, ankle to knee high. I'm not sure this is actually working out, but I'm gonna give it a few more days. (Bella immediately returned to her shove-them-in-all-together-then-just-grab-two-each-morning method.)

Snow Day Nine: Concluded that while it's actually rather pleasant being stuck here in the house together, isolated from the rest of the world as snow falls and falls and falls and falls, our house really isn't big enough for a proper game of handball or, for that matter, Big Wheeling down the hallways. But we're thinking we could have a pretty good July Fourth Ball.